This tells me that electronic music is one area of music that did not relegate itself entirely to the New York scene, and whose principal development may have even been more central to the West Coast. We have seen avant garde composers on the West Coast before now (Henry Cowell, LaMonte Young, etc.), but this is a movement for which the West Coast is central to its development.
I'll be honest, I have little interest in most of the important, pioneering steps in this movement, i.e. Varèse, Oliveros, etc. I am not against it; I'm glad that this music exists, and I can certainly see how it might lead to music that would interest me more. Why doesn't it interest me? I can't be entirely certain, but I can try to examine it. For the most part, there is nothing for me to grab onto. Without a tonal center OR rhythmic pulse OR single drone or other sonic artifact that grounds it in one place, I find myself searching for something that isn't there. Much of this music is arhythmic and atonal, but very busy. Often when these conditions occur in music, I find myself lost in a sea of uninteresting confusion. Lots of stuff is happening, but I can't find a reason or way to care about it.
Case and point here are works like Varèse's groundbreaking "Poème electronique" and Morton Subotnik's "Silver Apples of the Moon." (Note: WIkipedia informs me that the Subotnik is important for being one of the first electronic works that IS rhythmic, but I hear most of its sounds as being utterly unrelated to the underlying, background pulsing.) I hear a lot of interesting sounds here that would be interesting on their own, but they are thrown together with compositional intent that I can't even begin to fathom, and so it just sounds like unrelated sounds trying desperately to be related.
This brings me to Alvin Lucier, the only composer we are looking at today with whose work I can connect and find something interesting and worth listening to. Our example of his work is Music on a Long Thin Wire (1977), a sound installation in which a piano string is stretched across a room, oscillators and magnets are coupled with it, and with these it produces a long, slowly changing tone. To be honest, I don't fully understand the science of what's going on here, but it sets in motion a fascinating sonic experiment. I can say the same of most of the several other Lucier pieces I have encountered. In Music for a Solo Performer (1965), he attaches electrodes to his head in order to use his brainwaves as a method for controlling sound output through percussion instruments. Again, I'm confused on the "how," but the "what" is very interesting.
Wonderfully overdramatic shot of Alvin Lucier at one end of the wire
Music for a Long Thin Wire sets up a deep sonic atmosphere. I can start it, sit down, and zone in and out as it changes gradually. I will listen intently for a while, then zone out for a bit, then be pulled back in as I hear it alter slightly. I can understand the sonic process (minus the scientific details), and a composer's will is not getting in the way. I think that too often, when music lacks such things as meter and any form of standardized pitch collection, the composer's will can easily get in the way of this music.
Lucier's words back this up consistently. He doesn't want music to be about "Look what I can do;" he wants it to be about what can naturally occur when some parameters have been set up. I connect with this easily. It's the concert music equivalent of going outside, listening to birdsongs, and enjoying them as they are instead of wishing to write them into pieces for a purpose (sort of Cage vs. Messiaen there -- neither one right, but serving opposite goals). As he says, "It's nothing to do with performers being virtuosi, or audiences having a good time by participation. Rather, you're quiet and you pay attention." As for composers getting in the way of music, he says "Hammering and shaping materials never feels right to me….I'm concerned in music with exploration and discovery, rather than manipulation and control." His pieces are built toward this, and they work incredibly well through that lens. Maybe others will find this boring, and it's not like I want to listen to Lucier's music for 10 hours nonstop, but I really do find his works interesting to experience. I also think that they can only truly work live, because a recording just doesn't convey what's physically going on, and doesn't carry the incredible timbal detail that is necessary in listening to his works.
Even Lucier's works that require a performer in the more traditional sense of the word follow his musical ideals. For example, "Silver Streetcar for the Orchestra" for amplified triangle is a study in the sounds of the triangle. It asks the performer to beat the triangle repeatedly and evenly, while VERY gradually changing the beating spot, rate of striking, and use of muffling. While the performer does change what they are doing over the course of the piece (via these parameters), it is gradual and allows for a sense of non-intention--simply gradually changing in a linear fashion to allow the triangle to do what it will.
Here's one great performance by an Ithacan, Nick Hennies: "Silver Streetcar for the Orchestra" (1988) (the YouTube embed wasn't working).
Lucier's stress on disciplined attentiveness to gradually shifting sound patterns is a fascinating standpoint to pursue when listening to such music, and I really enjoy the music that arises from it. That said, Oliveros et al's pursuit of ostensible randomness soaking in compositional intent does not interest me (though I'm glad it exists and some continue to pursue that avenue).
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